Former Indian women's captain Mithali Raj's absence from the India squad for the semifinals against England in the ICC Women's World T20 has created quite a stir. There has been a huge debate on skipper Harmanpreet snubbing Mithali from the playing XI as India were ousted from the tournament.
Although it was a call made by the team management, retired pacer Jhulan Goswami admits that she 'felt bad' on seeing Mithali benched before the crunch clash.
"It's just one bad day for our girls, and it's all over. We played good cricket throughout the group stage but failed to hold our nerve in the semifinal," Goswami was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
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"The decision (to bench Mithali) was taken by the team management. I am sure they have their reasons, but as an Indian cricket fan I felt bad to see Mithali sitting in the dugout.”
India's dreams of winning a maiden global title lay in tatters after a questionable omission and an inexplicable batting collapse saw them crash to an eight-wicket defeat against England in the semi-finals of the ICC Women's World T20.
The bold decision to drop Mithali, the highest run-getter in shortest format, may haunt the Indian team for the longest time to come as coach Ramesh Powar and captain Harmanpreet Kaur will have a lot of answering to do in coming days.
"We won the toss and decided to bat but could not make it count. Despite the good start (43 in 6 overs) by Smriti (Mandhana) and Taniya (Bhatia) we crumbled from 89/2 to be bowled out for 112," the Bengal pacer opined.
"The girls batted well in the warm-up matches as well as group league stage of the WT20 meet, but our batting display against England was shoddy."
"Our players failed to adapt to the conditions and lacked application," said Jhulan after the Indian women once again failed to grab their chances.
It was yet another story of Indian women not showing enough temperament dring big match days, having lost the 50-over World Cup final to England at Lord's last year and the Asia Cup T20 final to Bangladesh, earlier this year.
